POET AS RADIO - Jack Spicer said that the poet is not a creator, but a conduit, getting messages from an undefinable source to form the poem. He thought of a poet as a radio, broadcasting words. We like to think of POET AS RADIO as an opportunity for writers to broadcast their words as well.

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Tuesday, October 1, 2013

September 29, 2013 Nico Peck Live!!!!

This Sunday the great Nico Peck joined us at Lightrail studios to discuss their chapbooks The Pyrrhaiad (Trafficker Press 2012) and Welter (Queer City, 2012). In Pyrrhaiad they are presenting a "Queer Iliad;" the title character emerged when they read Ulysses in which the characters ponder what Achilles's name was when he lived as a girl. This question led them to Robert Graves who answered this question by naming Pyrrha. This "re-membering" of the classics is part of Nico's own "gender journey" in which the page can be a mirror of that journey. While writing off of the very gendered text of mythology, they employ transgender pronouns. The work includes varied forms, and the chapbook, since it is published by Trafficker Press, includes an interview with Nico at that end. After the break, we talked about the separation of subject and object and how troubling that dichotomy may allow one to move past the world of thought, where we separate ourselves from the world, and into a space where oppression of the other is no longer possible. Towards the end of the interview we discussed Welter, a beautiful chap which is typed in courier font and has old maps as its end sheets. This work tackles etymology as well as Nico's activist spirit as it recounts reading at Occupy Oakland and entering/leaving "temporary utopian zones." They are also involoved in the Bay Area Public School, which is a free school where anyone can teach or take a class. Check it out at bayareapublicschool.org. You can email Nico if you are interested in their chapbooks, through queercity.org.Click Here to Listen